Imagine a world without “Macbeth,” “The Taming of the Shrew,” “The Tempest” and “Twelfth Night.” Imagine a world without “All the world’s a stage,” “Beware the ides of March,” “We are such stuff as dreams are made on,” “Something wicked this way comes” and “If music be the food of love, play on.”
William Shakespeare wrote those plays, and those words. But without the First Folio, they would have been lost to history. The First Folio was published in 1623, seven years after Shakespeare’s death, by two of his friends, John Heminges and Henry Condell. It contained 36 of the Bard’s plays, including 18 that had never been published in book form before. “All’s Well That Ends Well,” “Antony and Cleopatra,” “As You Like It,” “Comedy of Errors,” “Coriolanus,” “Cymbeline,” “1 Henry VI,” “Henry VIII,” “Julius Caesar,” “King John,” “Macbeth,” “Measure for Measure,” “The Taming of the Shrew,” “The Tempest,” “Timon of Athens,” “Twelfth Night,” “Two Gentlemen of Verona” and “The Winter’s Tale.”
This year is the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. In commemoration, the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., which owns 82 of the 235 surviving copies of the First Folio, is sending those folios on the road, one location for each of the 50 states. The closely guarded historical artifact will be on view to the public at the William Benton Museum of Art at University of Connecticut in Storrs from Sept. 1 to 25.
Some of those 18 plays had been published previously as quartos, which are little more than pamphlets. “They were like the paperbacks you pick up at the airport bookstore and then throw away when you’re done,” said Lindsay Cummings, an assistant professor of dramatic arts at UConn.
Few quartos from that era remain. The publication of the plays in the form of a folio, a bound, leather-covered book with high-quality paper, guaranteed that Shakespeare’s legendary language would survive the centuries.
“Plays were not considered literature. They were not for reading. They were for seeing at the theater,” Cummings said. “There was not a huge push to publish and preserve them. Up until then, folios were usually religious or court documents or government decrees.”
Cummings said many people were offended that works originating in what was considered the morally questionable world of theater were published as folios. “After the publication of the second edition of the First Folio, people got mad. They said publishing plays as a folio was a desecration of what was supposed to be important,” she said. “Theater for much of history has had a mixed reputation. It’s not that it’s nonreligious or nongovernmental. It’s because it’s plays.”
Centuries later, the First Folio — its actual title is “Mr. William Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories & Tragedies” — is considered one of the most important publications in world history, ensuring that the Bard of Avon would forever be considered the greatest playwright of all time.
The only four Shakespeare plays not published in the folio are “Pericles, Prince of Tyre” and “The Two Noble Kinsmen,” which survive to this day and are believed to have been written by Shakespeare with collaborators, along with “Cardenio” and “Love’s Labours Won,” which are lost.
Matthew J. Pugliese, a professor of dramatic arts and the managing director of Connecticut Repertory Theatre, puts on one Shakespeare play every season. This year, it’s “King Lear,” which will run Oct. 6 to 16 at the Jorgensen theater on campus.
The words of Shakespeare are so revered, Pugliese said, that they bring out the sticklers in the audience. “Whenever you do Shakespeare, there’s always somebody in the first row, sitting there with a script, making sure nobody has changed Shakespeare’s words,” he said. “There’s always somebody fact-checking you.”
Other Shakespeare Activities
The exhibition of the First Folio will be presented in conjunction with a series of events this fall. Among those events is a companion exhibit at the William Benton Museum of Art, “The Culture of Shakespeare.” The exhibit features student-designed posters of Shakespeare plays and two paintings on loan from the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, one of the character Bottom from “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and one of a production of Ben Jonson’s 1598 play “Every Man in his Humour,” in which Shakespeare played a role.
The Benton exhibit also includes costumes from a 2014 Hartford Stage production of “Hamlet”: Gertrude’s blood-red dress and crown, Claudius’ ruffed jacket and pants, Hamlet’s more low-key ensemble and two dresses worn by Ophelia, one before and one after her psychological breakdown.
The posters cleverly play on the themes in the plays. Olivia Narciso’s poster for the comic love story “Twelfth Night” shows a pair of kissing hearts. Vanessa Hopper’s “Taming of the Shrew” poster shows two wasps at battle. Kim Vetel’s “Antony and Cleopatra” poster is dominated by a Cleopatra-like necklace. Nikki McDonald’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” poster shows a blue-tinged forest where up is not up and down is not down.
Starting Sept. 9, another gallery in the Benton will have a political-themed exhibit featuring a broadside of the Declaration of Independence. A broadside is a published version that was distributed throughout the 13 colonies. From that date until the end of the First Folio exhibit, visitors can see two historic manuscripts in the same museum visit.
Other events include a public reading of “Macbeth” in New Britain, a talk on the original English-language pronunciation of Shakespeare, a parade in Mansfield featuring Bread & Puppet Shakespeare puppets, a talk on “The Act of Gender in Shakespeare Acting,” a concert of Shakespearean-era music and a bilingual (Spanish and English) puppetry adaptation of “Macbeth” called “El Beto.”
“FIRST FOLIO! THE BOOK THAT GAVE US SHAKESPEARE” will be at The William Benton Museum of Art, 245 Glenbrook Road, on the campus of University of Connecticut in Storrs, from Sept. 1 to 25. An opening reception will be Sept. 1 from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. featuring Shakespearean-era music and a talk by actor and UConn grad Forrest McClendon Details: benton.uconn.edu. For details about other campus events to mark the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, visit shakespeare.uconn.edu.
